Food Review: The Granola Bar

The “Crunchy Elvis” yogurt parfait from the Granola Bar. Photo by Gabriella Nutile/Spectrum.

By Gabriella Nutile

Co-Copy Editor & Features Editor

“You’ve never been The Granola Bar?” is what people would always ask me before I finally went.

Although, I do now understand their disbelief because The Granola Bar is just as good as my friends keep saying.

The famous café is located in Westport, Conn. and is about a 15 minute drive from campus. While 15 minutes might seem like a little too much of a drive for granola, you are mistaken because it is everything I could have hoped for and more.

As my GPS announced to my friends and I that we had arrived to our destination, I saw that the café was in a cute strip mall that included stores such as Lily Pulitzer and other high-end brands.

Walking into The Granola Bar was not what I had pictured, as the interior color scheme consisted of greys, browns, and whites.

In front of you are two signs, the right side stating take out and the left side saying eat in.

If you are planning to eat in though, expect at least a 10 minute wait, especially during lunch time. That is when they are the busiest, which is around the time that we went there.

While my friends and I waited for about 15 minutes to be seated, I took in the cool design of this place. Hanging from the ceiling were white circular bulbs that helped light the place up. On the right hand side there were different sized shelves that have furniture on the top half and then their products on the bottom, such as their almond butter and granola that are packaged for purchase.

My favorite part of the place though was the back of the café, and that is where you can order your take out. The back wall has a chalkboard against it with their menu written in different colors and fonts, adding to the very modern and hip feel of the place.

There are two seating options in the café; you can either sit at their tables or at their bar-like seating area, which faces the tables. When our waitress got us, we were placed at one of their tables.

I had heard such great things about their fresh, healthy food options, so I ended up ordering two things: the Crunchy Elvis yogurt parfait and their avocado toast. The Crunchy Elvis comes with Greek yogurt, their homemade vanilla almond granola and their homemade almond butter, sliced bananas and drizzled honey. Their avocado toast is mashed avocado on multi-grain bread with flax seeds on top of it, but they offer a bunch of options to add on top of it

Originally I thought the yogurt parfait was going to be very small and that the avocado toast was going to be very big, but I had misconceptions with both of my choices. When my Crunchy Elvis came out, it was much bigger than I expected, and my avocado toast was a lot smaller.

The display of my yogurt parfait was so cute and looked so good that I had to be one of those basic girls and take a picture of it. The Granola Bar also provides perfect lighting for pictures.

I immediately started with the Crunchy Elvis and I fell in love. Like I think I went to heaven and came back. Their almond butter is also out of this world, which I almost bought but it was about $12 and I’m not about that right now. Everything about it was just so good.

Now, the avocado toast was sort of a disappointment for me. First off, this toast cost me $8, which I think is pretty expensive for one slice of multi-grain toast cut in four triangles with some avocado on it. Second of all, I thought I liked avocado more than I actually do because I ate only one piece of it and that was enough for me due to there being too much avocado on it.

The avocado toast isn’t the only thing that is pricey at this place though, almost everything on their menu is too. So expect to drop at least ten to fifteen dollars, maybe even more depending on how much you order and if you get a drink.

As a senior though, I regret not coming to this café earlier in my college years because I was very much missing out.

So if anyone tells me they haven’t gone there, I will definitely be one of those people saying back to them in shock, “you haven’t been to The Granola Bar yet?”